Portal Creator To Boggle Our Minds Once More With Quantic Conundrum

A First-Person Puzzle Platformer From Square

Earlier this week, Square snapped up the rights to Kim Swift's next title and promised an official announcement later in the week. Swift, who co-created the first Portal game at Valve, has since relocated to Airtight Games, developers of the critically-panned Dark Void, where she is now working on Quantic Conundrum, a first-person puzzle platformer where alter the 'dimensions' of a room, throwing physics, gravity and even the molecular makeup of any given object out of whack.

The premise for Quantic Conundrum is simple; you take on the role of an as-yet-nameless young boy, dropped off at his uncle Fitz Quadwrangle's mansion for the weekend. However, your uncle is nowhere to be seen, so the boy ventures deeper into his mansion-cum-laboratory to find him. However, the boy soon finds Quadwrangle's estate to be a devilish maze of wacky science and dangerous experiments. Equipped with a glove that allows him to alter dimensions, the boy sets about finding his lost uncle and solving the puzzle that is his now his home.

Drawn in a bold, colorful art-style with a low down perspective to match your young protagonist's height, Quantic Conundrum looks as intelligent and complex as Swift's previous reality-bender. The idea is that each room is a puzzle in and of itself, existing in a gaping hope in reality. Your glove allows you wrench these holes wider, thus opening you up to the possibility of other dimensions. An example shown off in a video narrated by Swift finds our young hero trapped in a room, the only escape route a ledge out of reach. A chair is nearby, but it's far too heavy to lift up and position beneath the ledge.

So, by slipping a pink power battery into a curious device sitting in the corner, we're given access to a so-called 'fluffy dimension', wherein the entire room takes on a lighter, softer form. We saunter over to the previously too heavy chair, lift it up with ease and plop it beneath the ledge. It's a deceptively simple concept, expanded upon by Swift who lifts a metal safe in the air whilst in the fluffy dimension and hurls it at a plate-glass wall. While the safe is in midair, Swift jumps back to reality, the safe maintaining its momentum and regaining its weight, crashing through the glass with ease.

Swift, who's already had a hand in creating iconic robotic characters - see Portal's maniacal AI antagonist, GLaDOS - then reveals your ever-present guide and helper, DOLLI. This Dynamic Object Linear Litigation Interface was built by Quadwrangle to clone objects, and appears as a giant mechanical face grinning on the walls. DOLLI will provide you with safes, vital for bypassing rooms.

So far, Quantic Conundrum already sounds like a classic in the making. With its strong art style, bold gameplay mechanics and wonderful humor - see IKE, Quadwrangle's Inter-dimensional Kinetic Entity pet that consumes so much food DOLLI was created - you can see why Square was so keen to snap it up. We'll have more for you on Quantic Conundrum as and when it develops. [Gamespot]